In the Moment

Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life. Omar Khayyám (1048 — 1131)

Riding pillon behind Kimmy on her moto (the Khmer nickname for motorbike), we rode the wide lanes of Monivong Boulevard in downtown Phnom Penh. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, we’d just had lunch at a North Korean restaurant (Pyongyang Traditional Restaurant it was called) where the waitresses stood too close by our chairs as we ate, and we were now heading to Monument Bookstore.

Kimmy was saying how glad she was that I was there, a friend from out of town that she was now taking around, and how pleasant that she and I were sharing the moment. “I’m so blessed,” she said. Because she said it more than once, I had the feeling the moment meant more to her than she let on. I began to feel the same way.

Such feelings, rooted in joy and friendship, arise out of the simplest contexts. A bike ride under a clear blue sky, going nowhere of particular importance, yet of feeling unexpectedly and supremely like someone from nowhere had given you a gift too big to hold with your hands. This surely makes the heart overflow.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this. — Henry David Thoreau (1817 –1862)